May 1998, the Arklay Mountains had been shrouded in continuous plum rain for nearly two months.
It had been exactly three years since William Birkin withdrew from the Arklay Research Facility and moved into the Raccoon City NEST laboratory.
The underground facility, once the core R&D site for the Umbrella Corporation’s Progenitor Virus and T-Virus, was now nothing but an empty shell; high-level resources had been diverted to the G-Virus project, the Tyrant Project had entered final debugging before mass production, and the sole task of the remaining supervisor, John Clemens, was to watch over S01 experimental subject: Chloe, who had been forgotten on the second underground level.
The reinforced glass of the isolation chamber was covered in a faint layer of condensation, completely severing Chloe from the outside world.
For eight years, she had not left this laboratory for even a single step; the researchers, like programmed machines, punctually completed blood draws, vital sign monitoring, and viral synchronization rate comparisons every day, without a single word of unnecessary communication.
In the eyes of John’s team, she was not a human, but a living gene bank sealed away by the Umbrella Corporation, the highest-spec specimen of perfect symbiosis with the T-Virus, no different from the virus test tubes on the shelves or the Tyrant prototypes in the culture tanks.
“Subject S01, body temperature 36.6°C, T-Virus activity stable, neural inhibition parameters normal, no trend toward berserk state.” Researcher Luke lowered his head to tap on the data pad, his gaze never once falling on the glass chamber.
His partner, Irene, finished checking the console parameters, raised her hand to turn off the main indoor lights, leaving only the faint glow of two emergency wall lights, “Monitoring for today is finished, lock the laboratory.”
The electronic door closed heavily, and the footsteps gradually faded away.
Chloe slowly propped herself up, her fingertips lightly touching the cold glass.
She could clearly perceive the steady rhythm of the T-Virus within her, and even more, she could sense that the entire research facility was heading toward collapse.
This building, buried deep within the mountains, had long been a ticking time bomb abandoned by the Umbrella Corporation.
And what she did not know was that a revenge spanning decades had already quietly spread from the ruins of the Training Facility toward Arklay.
In John Clemens’s office, cold instructions came through the encrypted communication channel; his knuckles, gripping the communicator, turned slightly white, and his face was so gloomy it could drip water.
His deputy, Carl, stood in front of the desk, reporting the latest situation with a panicked expression.
“Director, the Training Facility has had no signal feedback for 72 hours.
Low-altitude reconnaissance by security drones shows that all peripheral buildings are destroyed, with no signs of life.”
Carl handed the tablet to John, the screen displaying blurry aerial footage of devastation, “Headquarters has explicitly ordered that all personnel are prohibited from investigating, and they require us to prioritize reinforcing the Arklay Research Facility to strictly prevent the leakage of the T-Virus and the loss of experimental subjects.”
“And If you’re enjoying it, drop a Power Stone for me!”